Anthony Davidson reckons that there is room for further improvement in Le Mans’ new qualifying format after the JOTA team missed out on a Hyperpole spot due to traffic on track.
Davidson’s team-mate Antonio Felix da Costa failed to qualify in the top six, which prevented the #38 ORECA 07-Gibson from making it through into Friday’s new Hyperpole session. Speaking to MotorsportWeek.com after Thursday’s session, Davidson says the slower traffic out on track was to blame for JOTA’s elimination.
“Traffic, just traffic,” Davidson ssaid. “I mean, everyone had traffic today, even the fastest time out there, and it’s never the same for everyone in that sense.
“It’s impossible to know our true pace, because everyone had traffic. That’s the reality of it, really.
And I’m all up for the Hyperpole format, I think it’s a really good idea, I think it creates a new spectacle but I just think I’m of the opinion if you’re gonna make a spectacle out of qualifying, just split the category of GTE and LMP, like in WEC and then you can have a more fair comparison between cars’ performances and drivers’ performances.”
Davidson made the comparison with Formula One, which the ex-F1 driver says also took a while to iron out the kinks in its qualifying format.
“I think it took Formula One a long, long time to come up with this fantastic format that we have at the moment, and I don’t think it should be touched and the only time it was touched, it was a disaster in recent times, and it only lasted two races.
So we quickly went back to the format we have today, it’s a tried and tested system and I think it is good that we’re starting to look at the qualifying format in Le Mans but I do think it can be improved further and make it even better.”
The Briton said he was disappointed to miss out on a top six spot after the team ran throughout the day with a qualifying set-up.
“Just to simplify it: the car has been quite pointy and for qualifying you need a pointy balance,” Davidson explained. “That wasn’t our intention but that’s just the way it unfolded.
So actually in qualifying we were quite happy with the car balance, but for the race we need to calm it down a bit and create a bit more understeer in the car.”
